Having read “Empty Planet” about how developed nations are neither having enough babies or immigrating enough workers to sustain their populations, this seems to be a likely scenario. But I can’t seem to understand what precisely happens to a nation’s economy over time as the population shrinks. Obviously it would have some benefit to the planet’s ecology, eventually, were there less humans on it. But is a shrinking economy always catastrophic? Or, once the immediate demographic issues with too many elderly people and not enough workers to pay for their care resolves itself (as in…the old people die), what happens then? Could it then become a good thing to be a smaller country with less people in it?
Arizona is in the middle of a water crisis. The Rio Verde Community ran out of water and Scottsdale refused to supply them. New developments have been stopped due to fears of not having enough water, and everyone is angry at a Saudi megafarm that grows alfalfa.
I believe a Water Tax and Dividend is the best solution to solve this problem. What do you think of Natural Resource Taxes? Could something unilateral, applying only to one state work? Or would AZ need to get California involved to make it a win-win scenario?
And lastly, can we just take water rights away from farmers that easily?
Residents in Saint Paul, Minnesota are advocating for legislation to increase property taxes to fund low-income childcare. I'm interested in your take on this approach to the childcare issues and how the implementation might play out on the childcare market in the area (ie impact on everyone to more people with access to childcare).
Hey Matt! Could you do a story about how the US selling its strategic helium reserve makes no sense especially since helium is very important for semiconductor fabrication! It seems like we are kind of locked in to doing it right now but it doesn’t make any sense and the Biden Admin should be doing everything it can to protect our helium supply!
What was the final "conclusion" from the deep poverty (Schaefer and Edin's work specifically) from ten or so years ago? Seemed like cash transfers are way down, but non-cash benefits cover a lot of that gap. Plus underreporting of income led to a lot of pushback on the "$2 a day" thesis. If anything it seemed like people on the Left wanted to blame poverty on Clinton and welfare reform while the larger culprit was Obama's lackluster response to the GFC.
Ex-military YouTuber/OSINT guy Ryan McBeth believes that the US media has a track record of consistently getting stories with a military angle wrong, and that this happens because so few people in journalism have any military background: https://ryanmcbeth.substack.com/p/why-the-new-york-times-gets-it-wrong Do you agree? Is this just Gell-Mann amnesia? If you agree, how big a problem do you think it is, and what could be done about it?
Perhaps it is too late to add a question, but I didn't see one along these lines:
I think a real case can be made that the decision to pass or not pass Ukraine aid is going to be one of the most consequential policy decisions made during the Biden presidency. It seems like it could be easily one of those bills, that if not passed, will end up viewed as a clearly boneheaded mistake.
For those who support the aid: what can an ordinary citizen do to help push this policy toward passage? It seems that there are enough Republicans who support the aid to get a discharge petition together, in theory, but in practice most analysts agree that's unlikely.
Do you think it was a bad idea to give so much money to state and local governments during Covid? One thing that seems to go unmentioned is that the increase in the federal debt as a proportion of gdp is perfectly canceled out by the decrease in state and local debt. One plausible story is that the higher federal debt makes deficit reduction more popular which is a good thing under full employment. On the other hand, it plausibly hurts national democrats at the margin and lowered the ability to put other things in the ARP such as a longer duration CTC.
Matt has talked a lot about how conservatives are high conscientiousness while liberals are high openness. But with educational polarization, high-skill professions with high educational requirements (doctors, lawyers, scientists, etc.) are increasingly liberal. Presumably, it takes high degree of conscientiousness to complete this amount of education and then do surgery or whatever. Conversely, looking at Trump and many of his supporters, I don't think anyone would describe them as "high conscientiousness." How do you reconcile this?
Why are pharmacies in the US so slow at filling prescriptions? One thing I’ve noticed living in Taiwan is that after I’m done with my doctor visit, they usually send me to a nearby pharmacy and then my medicine is ready as soon as I arrive. But if I go to CVS, usually I have to wait at least another 20-30 minutes for my meds to be ready. What gives?
I can appreciate that you might not want to write on this after having posted your points on Saturday, but I'm curious how significant of an age event that Biden would need to have to change your mind about him staying in the race? Or is there not one that you think would be sufficient short of him being clearly incapacitated?
What can Biden do to improve basic competence of the administration? The inability to grasp what a disaster the border was becoming, sluggish rollout of IRA funding, failure to ramp up arms production, inability to successfully keep Red Sea traffic open. It seems there is a pattern that with some exceptions (Medicare drug pricing, anti-trust initiatives, student loan procedural improvements, the big fine on Southwest by the FAA) there is a tendency to just not be able to effectively deal with problems. (I know, I know, compared to which mythical competent administration in this century?) But this administration seems above average in identifying problems but not great at implementation
This is a fine idea but it should supplement not replace the mailbag.
#BBTM
Bring Back The Mailbag
Having read “Empty Planet” about how developed nations are neither having enough babies or immigrating enough workers to sustain their populations, this seems to be a likely scenario. But I can’t seem to understand what precisely happens to a nation’s economy over time as the population shrinks. Obviously it would have some benefit to the planet’s ecology, eventually, were there less humans on it. But is a shrinking economy always catastrophic? Or, once the immediate demographic issues with too many elderly people and not enough workers to pay for their care resolves itself (as in…the old people die), what happens then? Could it then become a good thing to be a smaller country with less people in it?
Arizona is in the middle of a water crisis. The Rio Verde Community ran out of water and Scottsdale refused to supply them. New developments have been stopped due to fears of not having enough water, and everyone is angry at a Saudi megafarm that grows alfalfa.
I believe a Water Tax and Dividend is the best solution to solve this problem. What do you think of Natural Resource Taxes? Could something unilateral, applying only to one state work? Or would AZ need to get California involved to make it a win-win scenario?
And lastly, can we just take water rights away from farmers that easily?
Residents in Saint Paul, Minnesota are advocating for legislation to increase property taxes to fund low-income childcare. I'm interested in your take on this approach to the childcare issues and how the implementation might play out on the childcare market in the area (ie impact on everyone to more people with access to childcare).
On a scale from 1 to 5, how concerning is fragmentation of culture caused by the Internet?
Hey Matt! Could you do a story about how the US selling its strategic helium reserve makes no sense especially since helium is very important for semiconductor fabrication! It seems like we are kind of locked in to doing it right now but it doesn’t make any sense and the Biden Admin should be doing everything it can to protect our helium supply!
Who negatively impacted society more, elon tweeting memes or hitler?
What was the final "conclusion" from the deep poverty (Schaefer and Edin's work specifically) from ten or so years ago? Seemed like cash transfers are way down, but non-cash benefits cover a lot of that gap. Plus underreporting of income led to a lot of pushback on the "$2 a day" thesis. If anything it seemed like people on the Left wanted to blame poverty on Clinton and welfare reform while the larger culprit was Obama's lackluster response to the GFC.
What would I do when I’m up at 6:22 and the SB post hasn’t dropped yet?
Ex-military YouTuber/OSINT guy Ryan McBeth believes that the US media has a track record of consistently getting stories with a military angle wrong, and that this happens because so few people in journalism have any military background: https://ryanmcbeth.substack.com/p/why-the-new-york-times-gets-it-wrong Do you agree? Is this just Gell-Mann amnesia? If you agree, how big a problem do you think it is, and what could be done about it?
Perhaps it is too late to add a question, but I didn't see one along these lines:
I think a real case can be made that the decision to pass or not pass Ukraine aid is going to be one of the most consequential policy decisions made during the Biden presidency. It seems like it could be easily one of those bills, that if not passed, will end up viewed as a clearly boneheaded mistake.
For those who support the aid: what can an ordinary citizen do to help push this policy toward passage? It seems that there are enough Republicans who support the aid to get a discharge petition together, in theory, but in practice most analysts agree that's unlikely.
Do you think it was a bad idea to give so much money to state and local governments during Covid? One thing that seems to go unmentioned is that the increase in the federal debt as a proportion of gdp is perfectly canceled out by the decrease in state and local debt. One plausible story is that the higher federal debt makes deficit reduction more popular which is a good thing under full employment. On the other hand, it plausibly hurts national democrats at the margin and lowered the ability to put other things in the ARP such as a longer duration CTC.
Matt has talked a lot about how conservatives are high conscientiousness while liberals are high openness. But with educational polarization, high-skill professions with high educational requirements (doctors, lawyers, scientists, etc.) are increasingly liberal. Presumably, it takes high degree of conscientiousness to complete this amount of education and then do surgery or whatever. Conversely, looking at Trump and many of his supporters, I don't think anyone would describe them as "high conscientiousness." How do you reconcile this?
Why are pharmacies in the US so slow at filling prescriptions? One thing I’ve noticed living in Taiwan is that after I’m done with my doctor visit, they usually send me to a nearby pharmacy and then my medicine is ready as soon as I arrive. But if I go to CVS, usually I have to wait at least another 20-30 minutes for my meds to be ready. What gives?
I can appreciate that you might not want to write on this after having posted your points on Saturday, but I'm curious how significant of an age event that Biden would need to have to change your mind about him staying in the race? Or is there not one that you think would be sufficient short of him being clearly incapacitated?
What can Biden do to improve basic competence of the administration? The inability to grasp what a disaster the border was becoming, sluggish rollout of IRA funding, failure to ramp up arms production, inability to successfully keep Red Sea traffic open. It seems there is a pattern that with some exceptions (Medicare drug pricing, anti-trust initiatives, student loan procedural improvements, the big fine on Southwest by the FAA) there is a tendency to just not be able to effectively deal with problems. (I know, I know, compared to which mythical competent administration in this century?) But this administration seems above average in identifying problems but not great at implementation